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June 20, 2014

The "garderobe" was the first bathroom…and be sure to guard your robes!

Over at the Smithsonian, Jimmy Stamp takes a look at the
history of the bathroom. As you may know, in the Middle Ages, folks kept chamber pots in their
bedrooms to poop and pee in, then threw the contents out the window. This led
to greater—and grosser?—things:

During the 11th-century castle-building boom, chamber pots
were supplemented with toilets . . . integrated into the architecture.

These early
bathrooms, known as “garderobes” were little more than continuous niches that
ran vertically down to the ground, but they soon evolved into small rooms that
protruded from castle walls . . . historian Dan Snow notes: “The name garderobe—which translates as guarding one's robes—is
thought to come from hanging your clothes in the toilet shaft, as the ammonia
from the urine would kill the fleas."

. . . the garderrobe actually had a strong resemblance to an
aspect of a castle’s defenses. And it works in the same basic way: gravity. And
while the garderobe was actually a weak spot in a castle’s defenses, woe be the
unassuming invader scaling a castle wall beneath one.

Several designs emerged
to solve the problem of vertical waste disposal—some spiral up towers, for
example, while some were entire towers; some dropped waste into
cesspools, moats, and some just dropped it onto the ground
below. Not all medieval compounds were okay with merely dumping excrement
onto the ground like so much hot oil.

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Links!

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How big is a "big book"?

Well, maybe not THAT big.

I talked about gross stuff...

...on The Bob & Tom Show!

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